Defending the Family,Defending the Faith: An Analysis of The Family: A Proclamation to the World,Religious Identity,and the Politics of Same-Sex Marriage in a Mormon Community

In this article, we apply Peter Berger's theory of religion as a social construct to learn how The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints (the Mormon Church) advances a heteronormative view of family relationships in the United States using a document titled The Family: A Proclamation to the World. Furthermore, applying cultural studies theory, we examine how believing Mormons negotiate the tension that arises when their secular values compete with those expressed by Church leaders. We argue that, although the Proclamation addresses a number of issues, the Church offers a closed text that emphasizes war narratives in which same-sex marriage is portrayed as a threat to LDS identity and the heteronormative family. This closed text is further legitimized by emphasis on the authority of Church leaders as oracles of God. The study participants largely accept the dominant narrative, and those who reject it, do so with some trepidation.     

Making the Case for Interpretative Phenomenological Analysis with LGBTGEQ+ Persons and Communities

ABSTRACT

The emergence of interpretative phenomenological analysis (IPA) in qualitative scholarship offers a means to derive in-depth meaning attending to the complexities of lived experience. IPA extends qualitative inquiry through a double hermeneutic whereby the researcher is making sense of the experiences of participants who are making sense of a phenomenon. In this article, the authors present seminal empirical studies using IPA with lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, gender expansive, queer communities, argue a rationale for its usefulness, discuss methodological insights and strategies, and offer potential future directions.     

African American Adolescents’ Psychological Well-Being: The Impact of Parents’ Religious Socialization on Adolescents’ Religiosity

The dearth of research literature on the religious beliefs and practices of African American adolescents has led to increased empirical inquiry, yet a lack of research considers African American adolescents’ religious beliefs and practices as an important developmental milestone. This study explored how African American parents’ religious socialization affected youth religious experiences and served as a culturally specific strength-based asset that promotes psychological well-being. Our sample included a socioeconomically diverse sample of 154 African American families. Accounting for demographics, adolescents’ relationship and communication with God were found to be associated with a healthier psychological well-being. Additionally, parents’ religious socialization impacted the relationship between youths religious beliefs and practice and psychological well-being. Overall, results suggest that parents’ and adolescents’ religious beliefs can promote psychological well-being.     

The methodology of a multi-model project examining how facebook infrastructures social relations

It is the purpose of this paper to make explicit the methodology (the theory of the methods) by which we conducted research for an Economic and Social Research Council-funded research project on the relationship of values to value. Specifically, we wanted to study the imperative of Facebook to monetize social relationships, what happens when one of our significant forms of communication is driven by the search for profit, by the logic of capital. We therefore wanted to ‘get inside’ and understand what capital's new lines of flight, informationally driven models of economic expansion, do to social relations. Taking up the challenge to develop methods appropriate to the challenges of ‘big data', we applied four different methods to investigate the interface that is Facebook: we designed custom software tools, generated an online survey, developed data visualizations, and conducted interviews with participants to discuss their understandings of our analysis. We used Lefebvre's [(2004). Rhythmnanalysis: Space, time and everyday life. London: Continuum] rhythmanalysis and Kember and Zylinska's [(2012). Life after new media: Mediation as a vital process. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press] ideas about ‘lifeness’ to inform our methodology. This paper reports on a research process that was not entirely straightforward. We were thwarted in a variety of ways, especially by challenge to use software to study software and had to develop our project in unanticipated directions, but we also found much more than we initially imagined possible. As so few academic researchers are able to study Facebook through its own tools (as Tufekci [(2014 Tufekci, Z. (2014). Big questions for social media big data: Representativeness, validity and other methodological pitfalls. In ICWSM ‘14: Proceedings of the 8th International AAAI Conference on Weblogs and Social Media, pp. 505–514. [Google Scholar]). Big questions for social media big data: Representativeness, validity and other methodological pitfalls. In ICWSM ‘14: Proceedings of the 8th International AAAI Conference on Weblogs and Social Media (pp. 505–514)] notes how, unsurprisingly, at the 2013 ICWSM only about 5% of papers were about Facebook and nearly all of these were co-authored with Facebook data scientists), we hope that our methodology is useful for other researchers seeking to develop less conventional research on Facebook.     

Opinions toward suicide: Cross-national evaluation of cultural and religious effects on individuals

This study evaluates the role that religious and cultural values have on individual opinions toward suicide worldwide. Using multilevel modeling with data from the fourth wave of the World Values Survey (42,299 individuals in 43 countries), the current study is designed to analyze the effect of individual (i.e., micro-level), and country (i.e., macro-level) characteristics on opinions toward suicide. Specifically, cultural values, religious affiliation, religious importance, and church attendance are analyzed at both the individual and country levels to evaluate the impact of individual and country level effects on opinions toward suicide. The results show that individual opinions toward suicide are influenced by individual belief as well as by the cultural and religious characteristics of their country. The results suggest that evaluation of individual opinions toward controversial behavior should account for the unique and cross-interaction effects of micro- and macro-level effects.     

Work–family conflict: The importance of differentiating between different facets of job characteristics

This review study clarifies the relationships between job characteristics and work–family conflict (WFC) by differentiating among three facets of job characteristics: latent, perceived, and enacted. To date, research linking job characteristics to WFC has not distinguished the facets of job demands and job resources in this way. Such distinctions are important as a means of understanding the affective, behavioural, and cognitive processes involved in determining how and when job characteristics relate to WFC. Our review of 115 studies showed that perceived job characteristics have been most commonly explored in relation to WFC, whereas latent and enacted job characteristics have been hardly examined. While these findings may not be surprising, our contribution lies in reviewing the literature through the lens of these categories. Based on the findings, and through highlighting examples in the extant literature, we argue that understanding job characteristics in terms of both how they are perceived and enacted by workers will provide a deeper insight into the mechanisms underlying the relationship between job characteristics and WFC. In order to inform evidence-based interventions, future research must uncover the dynamic mechanisms underpinning the connection between job characteristics and WFC through a focus on enacted job facets and the cognitive, affective, and behavioural processes involved.     

Double trouble: work–family conflict and well-being for second job holders

The purpose of this study was to provide an initial investigation into the work–family conflict (WFC) experiences of individuals who hold a second job. Specifically, we proposed two opposing theoretical arguments regarding the relationship between WFC and four measures of well-being: life satisfaction, physical health, emotional exhaustion, and exercise for individuals who hold two jobs. In a sample of individuals working two jobs, we tested whether the effects of WFC arising from the first job and from the second job exerted an additive or interactive effect on employee well-being. Our results indicated that for emotional exhaustion, physical symptoms, and life satisfaction, the effects of WFC from two jobs are interactive; but that for exercise, the effects of WFC from two jobs are additive. In both cases, the additional WFC experienced as a result of working a second job contributed to the prediction of employee well-being over and above WFC from the first job. Results are discussed within the context of relevant theory, and suggestions are made for future research.     

Adolescent girls’ race/ethnic status, identities, and drive for thinness

Using data from 7272 adolescent US girls, we explore how girls’ race/ethnic group status affects their bodyweight, perceptions of overweight, and weight control practices. We hypothesize that a girl’s race/ethnic status influences her basic identity which in turn prompts her to adopt or reject a “drive for thinness.” After controlling for family and peer support, school engagement, family SES, maturation, and family structure, we find that girls’ race/ethnic status influences their susceptibility to the thinness ideals of mainstream culture. African American girls weigh more than Asian, Hispanic, or White girls, but at any given weight they perceive themselves as overweight and attempt to control their weight less. Asian American and White girls invest most in thinness dynamics. Some evidence also suggests girls from lower SES families are less driven to be thin. Our results affirm the utility of viewing material bodies as “situations” that are experienced and interpreted in accord with identity group relations and dynamics.     

作为道德教育理论框架的自由主义:前景与问题

良好的道德教育是有一个强有力的哲学框架来支撑的.北美的道德教育大都立足于自由主义哲学传统之上.评判这种教育在道德上的合法性,就要用批判的眼光来审视这个哲学传统:首先对自由主义进行综述,然后对这一框架给予评估,并为构建规范框架提出建议,以期能为道德教育带来某种改变.